In a retail environment, trying to gain attention of shoppers is more and more challenging. Traditional displays may be ignored or may have little effect as shoppers assume there is nothing new on the display device. In addition, the content displayed does not change frequently, causing users to be bored with the displays.
Electronic advertisements may be more eye-catching that traditional static displays. However, even electronic displays that change over time can lose their effectiveness as shoppers become familiar with the content. Further, the lack of interaction with the display device means a retailer decides what is displayed to a user, rather than allowing the user to decide.
In addition, users are accustomed to being in control of electronic displays, both on portable devices and on larger displays. The attention span of shoppers continues to drop and traditional methods of pushing advertisements to users have less and less effect. Pushing advertisements to cell phones of users as they are near has been tried but users still find the advertisements to be of questionable value and potentially intrusive. Further, most advertisements are not additional, un-seen information, but old information repackaged. Finally, the shopper does not have the ability to manipulate a display device toward specific information desired by the user.